This time last year Niamh Ní Chaoimh was the Rebels’ intermediate captain and hoping for no setbacks as her second consecutive All-Ireland final coincided with her taking up a new teaching job in Abu Dhabi.

But anything that could go wrong did.

Not only did the Rebels lose for the second year in a row but it went to a replay, badly disrupting her travel plans.

The Killeagh defender returned for championship action this summer and lines out in defence again with her best mate Sarah Harrington.

Harrington is now captain and, after a few years temping in Youghal, is about to fly off to join her buddy in Abu Dhabi after securing a new teaching post.

“I was meant to go last Wednesday and am due to go next Thursday now so hopefully everything works out and I’m on that plane,” Harrington reveals.

“I’ve given up a lot of my life to camogie and football and this feels like the right time to travel.”

The hurls

hurleys will go with her as she’s already lined up a club — Na Fianna — in the United Arab Emirates which will surely be a far cry from Fr O’Neills and her family’s coastal home in scenic Knocadoon.

“It is beautiful. You can see Garryvoe and Ballycotton from our house. We live on the edge of the cliffs — next stop France!” she quips.

That bubbly personality has been a powerful ally for the high-quality dual player.

She won an All-Ireland club football medal with Inch Rovers in 2010 when she was just 18, an U21 All-Ireland soon after and was on the Rebels’ senior bench when they won the 2013 All-Ireland SFC final.

But, unable to break into that team of football superstars, she opted to throw her lot fulltime in with the county’s intermediate camogie side.

Humour is sometimes the only way her team have kept going after nothing to show for three All-Ireland finals in the last two years.

“People say ‘you have to lose one to win one’, or, in our case ‘lose two to win one,” she quips.

“We’d be joking in training sometimes about the ‘drive for five’. We’d just be happy to win one.”

So what have her team learned from two years of heartache?

“Not to let the occasion get to you, and that when you’re on top you’ve got to take all your chances,” Harrington stresses.

“We were up by eight points against Kilkenny two years ago and left them back into it. Last year we were up by five but Meath scored 1-1 within five minutes. Those things haunt you,” she admits.

“I will never forget that goal coming in from Kristina Troy, I can still see every single second of it. I was full-back and there was two of them coming at me and I had to decide whether to go or not.

“But there comes a time where it’s no good dwelling on the past. We’re a very different team this year with a lot of talented minors after freshening it up. It’s done. We’ve been there, we’ve felt the heartbreak. Now’s the time to forget all that and to just focus on ourselves. The way I look at it, what have we got to lose now?

They’re hoping it will finally be ‘third time lucky’ this time against a Mourne side that they know well.

“We only beat them by a point in the league. We beat them in the group stages but I wouldn’t think either of those games has any relevance.

“We’re not thinking about those anyway because Down are a very strong side.”

And what, God forbid, if it goes to a replay again and Harrington has that flight to catch next Thursday?

“If I can’t go, I can’t go,” she grins. “I’d definitely take a replay before a loss.”